Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau

(SPOILER [but then again the title is a spoiler]) Truly the best of Balzac. Fans of the original bon vivant will recoil in entertainment to the slow financial trainwreck of the (previously) shrewd businessman and military hero Cesar Birotteau. This novel showcases Balzac's familiarity with law and bankruptcy law and shines a light into the dark corners of finance, banking, and speculation during the dawn of the nineteenth century in France. This is another great act in the human comedy.

No one knows more about money problems than Honore de Balzac. He lived most of his life one step from his creditors: his house in Paris even had a special exit for avoiding them. CESAR BIROTTEAU is the story of an honest perfumer who is done in by the smarmy du Tillet, a former employee whom he had fired for embezzlement, who works in secret to take his revenge. Birotteau is lured into overextending himself and falls hard. True to his fascination with money and its epedemiology, Balzac delves into the guts of this bankruptcy and shows you all the forces at work to destroy an innocent man. This time, the innocent man prevails. Thanks to the help of Anselme Popinot, a brilliant young marketer in love with his daughter, Birotteau is able to pay back every cent, winning honor for himself after his life appeared to be all but over. This is one of Balzac's greatest novels. Birotteau is an honorable gentleman of the old school, a bit obtuse perhaps, but out of his depth among the wild speculations of the reign of Charles X. Watching these processes ensnare him is repellingly fascinating -- and Balzac spares us nothing.

This is the fifth Balzac book I have read, and it is the fourth best of all of them. This may be a great compliment to Balzac's writing abilities since he seems to be able to dispense classic after classic.This story, is a simple tale about the rise and fall of a perfumer. Cesar, the perfumer, lives in Paris and is having a fairly good life thanks to the invention of a hand cream. Unfortunately, since he is not a clever business man, Cesar falls into debt when he throws an elegant society ball. The rest of the book deals with his dowfall as Cesar deals with his wife and daughters sadness, a friend who ran off with 100000 francs, sleazy bankers, an angry nut dealer, architect and his future son in law. Cesar Birroteau is a fairly tragic story which will have the ability to move the reader. Those who have read other Balzac works will recognize Gobseck the money letter and also the reference to the Nucignens from La Pere Goriot.This is a great Balzac work with a notable ending. It is not as good as Eugenie Grandet, Ursule Mirouet or La Pere Goriot but is none the less excellent.Some readers may find Balzac's attention to detail exhausting in several places. Especially in one or two chapters dealing with accounting, you may as well skip over them because they are virtually incomprehensible but also unnecessary.Balzac's characters also seem similar if you have read other books. Cesar is similar to Goriot, Cesarine to Ursule Mirouet and Eugenie Grandet, the prodigy son in law (I forget his name) to Charles and Rastignac and finally the evil banker is similar to master criminal Vautrin.Overall excellent. His charcters cry and fall to their knees a lot but that's no surprise if you've read other books of Balzac.